Show HN: Scooter – Interactive find and replace in the terminal (github.com)

    #!/usr/bin/env bash
    
    # Function to escape special characters for sed
    escape_sed_string() {
        printf '%s\n' "$1" | gsed -e 's/[]\/$*.^[]/\\&/g'
    }
    
    help() {
      gum style --foreground cyan --italic "\
    Usage (everything optional, you will be prompted):\n\
    $0\n\
      --ext .js --ext .ts\n\
      --from \"source string\"\n\
      --to \"replacement string\"\n\
      --dir somePath"
    }
    
    # Parse command line arguments
    while [[ "$#" -gt 0 ]]; do
        case $1 in
            -h)
                help
                exit 0
                ;;
            --help)
                help
                exit 0
                ;;
            --ext) EXTENSIONS+=("$2"); shift ;;
            --from) REPLACE_FROM="$2"; shift ;;
            --to) REPLACE_TO="$2"; shift ;;
            --dir) DIRECTORY="$2"; shift ;;
            *) gum style --foreground red --bold "Unknown parameter: $1"; exit 1 ;;
        esac
        shift
    done
    
    # Check for missing parameters and prompt using gum
    if [ -z "${EXTENSIONS+set}" ]; then
        EXTENSIONS=($(gum choose \
            --no-limit \
            --selected .ts,.mts,.tsx,.vue,.js,.cjs,.mjs \
            .ts .mts .tsx .vue .js .cjs .mjs .txt .md .html .json))
    fi
    
    # Exit if no extension is selected
    if [ ${#EXTENSIONS[@]} -eq 0 ]; then
        gum style --foreground red --bold " Error: No extensions selected. Exiting."
        exit 1
    fi
    
    if [ -z "${REPLACE_FROM+set}" ]; then
        REPLACE_FROM=$(gum input --placeholder "Search string:")
        if [ -z "${REPLACE_FROM}" ]; then
            echo "No replace from string, exiting"
            exit 1
        fi
    fi
    if [ -z "${REPLACE_TO+set}" ]; then
        REPLACE_TO=$(gum input --placeholder "Replace string:")
    fi
    if [ -z "${DIRECTORY+set}" ]; then
        DIRECTORY="."
    fi
    
    # Escape strings for sed
    ESCAPED_FROM=$(escape_sed_string "$REPLACE_FROM")
    ESCAPED_TO=$(escape_sed_string "$REPLACE_TO")
    
    # Run the replacement
    for ext in "${EXTENSIONS[@]}"; do
        gum style --foreground blue " Replacing ${ext} files..."
        find "$DIRECTORY" -type f -name "*$ext" ! -path "*/node_modules/*" -exec gsed -i "s/$ESCAPED_FROM/$ESCAPED_TO/g" {} \;
    done
    
    gum style --foreground green --bold " Replacement complete."

It opens the current command line in $EDITOR, which often defaults to vim.

I assumed it uses ripgrep (or the underlying walkdir) because that's the established high-performance tool for this. But apparently not.

For more advanced needs, I have a custom thing called greprep that let's you make changes using your favorite editor. Workflow is like this:

  1. $ rg -n .... > /tmp/lines.txt
  2. (edit lines.txt in vscode)
  3. $ greprep /tmp/lines.txt to apply the changes

Being able to interactively ignore instances for replacement is great!

    for f in $(grep -l 'hello' *); do vim -c ':%s/hello/world/gc | wq' "$f"; done

    vim -c "argdo %s/hello/world/gce | update" -c "qall" *

I'm adding scooter to my cargo install favorites:

https://github.com/sixarm/cargo-install-favorites

https://github.com/ms-jpq/sad

https://github.com/thomasschafer/scooter/issues/6

Not everyone has the Rust toolchain installed on their machine. The `cargo install` installation directive needs to be discouraged.

1: https://ast-grep.github.io/

   #change xxx to yyy in all html
   bash> perl -pi.bak -e 's/xxx/yyy/g' *.html

   #change xxx10 (say) to yyy10 in all html
   bash> perl -pi.bak -e 's/xxx(\d+)/yyy$1/g' *.html

   # Change x4 to yyyy, where the number of y's equals to the number after x.
   bash> perl -pi.bak -e 's/x(\d+)/"y" x $1/ge' *.

And finally, to exclude files, one can use a subshell. For example, suppose you want to change all html, but exclude undesirable.html..

   perl -pi.bak -e 's/x/y/g'  $(ls *.html | egrep -v undesirable)